1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a computer-implemented method of generating an item number for an item, and more particularly, to a computer-implemented generation system allowing an user to create his/her personal encoding way for a variety of kinds of items.
2. Description of the Related Art
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems plan and control all resources (such as items and materials) in an enterprise. A typical ERP system provides applications for a user to control production/material management, quality management, plant maintenance, sales and distribution, human resources, and project management.
Material requirement planning (MRP) is the engine of the ERP system that plans the schedules for the purchase and manufacturing of materials. The plans for other resources are generally derived from it. MRP calculates the planned order released from the fundamental data. Key fundamental data for MRP includes the item master, bill of material, routing, and bill of resources.
The item master file describes the attributes of a company""s items, which include raw materials, works-in-process, semi-finished goods, and finished goods. The number of attributes of an item is generally very large, and thus they are normally divided into five groups: general attributes, attributes for planning, attributes for inventory, attributes for inspection, and attributes for costing. These include parts number, name specification, unit of measurement for quantity, product line, product sub-line, inventory type, inventory sub-type, drawing number, engineering change number, etc. The product line and sub-line are used to sort out the items for item master reports, material requirement reports, sales amount reports, cost reports, etc. The inventory type is usually defined as the material of the parts, such as iron, steel, brass, plastic, etc., and is used to analyze the cost of the parts. Inventory sub-types are generally used when further classification is required. The drawing number is used to fetch the drawings from the computer aided design (CAD) system and attach them to the manufacturing or purchasing documents. The engineering change number is used to link the ERP system to an outside workflow control system for monitoring the documents of an EC (Electronic Commerce) in progress, or for retrieving the record of the last EC when it has been closed.
However, the conventional ERP systems generally have the following drawbacks:
1. Each ERP system has its encoding way for a variety of kinds of items. The encoding methods between different ERP systems have large differences. Therefore, it is necessary to perform a transformation procedure between two ERP systems when a user or an industry chooses a new ERP system. The transformation procedure is terribly troublesome.
2. Because it is necessary to perform a transformation procedure between two ERP systems according to the prior art, a long transitional period is required for the user or the industry to adapt the new ERP software. For this reason, the education period and cost for the purchase people, the production management people, and the material management-people can be very large.
3. ERP systems are also used by research people, purchase people, and sales people. For the industries having plenty of items, it""s very hard for users to remember the item number of each item. For this reason, when the research people, purchase people, and sales people are filling out purchase orders, they can find out the necessary item numbers only by manually checking a table book. It""s very troublesome for them.
Accordingly, it is a primary object of the present invention to provide a computer-implemented method of generating an item number for an item.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a computer-implemented system of generating an item number for an item.
It is further another object of the present invention to provide a computer-implemented system for querying an item number for an item.
A method of generating an item number for an item is disclosed in the present invention. First, an item-type table is created and then a sequence of specification codes is determined on the item-type table. Next, a code table for each kind of the specification codes is created. After inputting a specification name for each kind of the specification code into the code table, a several of representative codes are input into the code table in sequence. After that, an item-type code is input into the item-type table, and then a specification description is input into the item-type table for each kind of the specification codes.
Thereafter, an item-number-encoding table is created, and an item type of the item is selected from the item-number-encoding table. After inputting an item-type code of the item into the item-number-encoding table, specification descriptions of the item type are shown on the item-number-encoding table. After deciding the representative codes according to the real properties of the item, the item number of the item is generated by clicking a button positioned on the item-number-encoding table.
According to one embodiment of the present invention, after generating the item number for each of the items, steps of querying an item number of a specific item are disclosed. First, an item-number-querying table is created. After choosing an option of inputting an item number directly, a part of the item number of the specific item is input into the item-number-querying table. Thereafter, items with item numbers containing the part are disclosed. Finally, the item numbers of the items are shown on the item-number-querying table.
According to another embodiment of the present invention, after generating the item number for each of the items, steps of querying an item number of a specific item are disclosed. First, an item-number-querying table is created. After choosing an option of querying item numbers from specifications, an item-type code of the specific item is decided. After showing corresponding specification properties of the item-type code on the item-number-querying table, the specification properties are filled according to the real properties of the specific item. Finally, the item number of the specific item is shown on the item-number-querying table.
According to the present invention, the item number is composed of the representative codes, and the representative codes represent all of the important specifications of an item. For this reason, it is not necessary for a user to realize the important specifications and properties of an item by querying on the computer. The convenience and efficiency of purchasing, checking, importing and exporting items can be significantly enhanced. The present invention allows a user to create his/her personal encoding way for a variety of kinds of items. The user can use the customary encoding way of his/her industry without transformation. No transitional period is required for the user to adapt the new ERP software. For this reason, the education period and cost for the purchase people, the production management people, and the material management people can be largely decreased.